


one step from crazy and two steps behind

by Lire_Casander



Series: through the years and miles between us [3]
Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Abduction, Blood, Break Up, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Maria DeLuca's POV, Mentions of Miluca, Portraying Maria as a Traitor for Dating Michael Guerin Behind Alex's Back
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-08
Updated: 2020-07-08
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:53:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,281
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25144222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lire_Casander/pseuds/Lire_Casander
Summary: maria has known for a while that she has to learn to let go
Relationships: Michael Guerin/Alex Manes
Series: through the years and miles between us [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1795390
Comments: 18
Kudos: 57





	one step from crazy and two steps behind

**Author's Note:**

  * For [CaptainVlamis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaptainVlamis/gifts).



> Please heed the warnings, especially **portraying Maria as a traitor for dating Michael Guerin behind Alex’s back**. Despite how the author feels about this whole ordeal, or how it is portrayed in this fic, I will not allow nor condone any kind of character bashing in the comments. This is not an anti-Maria fic, but a fic where I pour how I felt about the situation. Feel free to skip it if all you feel like saying are bad things about any of the characters.
> 
> Since I was so nicely asked for a sequel to the sequel... Here you have some angst and whump and hurt coming your way!
> 
> Title from _Love For Sale_ by Bon Jovi.

There’s only one thing that Maria DeLuca hates more than not being able to use her newfound powers because they might end up killing her sanity, and that is not being able to help her friends when they need it. As she watches the building in front of them erupting in flames, windows bursting and showering the field surrounding it with shards of glass, Maria can’t help the feeling of helplessness that takes over her.

By her side, Rosa lifts a hand up to her mouth trying to conceal the pained gasp that escapes it anyway. Maria wants to hug her and assure her friend that everything will be fine in the end, but right now she isn’t sure _anything_ will even begin to feel right anytime soon. They’re both waiting by the trucks for the rest of the team to come out from their rescue mission, but they haven’t seen anyone getting out of the building — at least not from the entrances they used to get inside — and when the alarms have set off they both have feared the worst.

It looks like they haven’t been wrong.

There’s ruckus coming from one of the sides of the building, a noise thatʼs almost inaudible over the flames engulfing everything, but she feels a strange pull that forces her legs to move into that direction. She ignores Rosaʼs cries, and she goes as far as shrugging her off when her friend tries to stop her by pulling at her arm. 

“You canʼt be serious, Maria!” Rosa exclaims. “The building is on _fire_!” 

“They are inside!” she yells back, over the creaking of bricks melting under the heat coming from behind the busted windows. 

She runs towards the building, her gut guiding her as she ducks to avoid being hit by the falling debris, skidding through the sparks that threaten to ignite against her skin. Maria has never feared anything in her life — except for her mother slowly deteriorating, before realizing Mimi is supposed to be inconvenient in her time-traveling shenanigans — but right now she’s scared that she wonʼt be there in time. 

“Safety is the other way around!” she hears as she rushes past Liz and Max, who are running to the trucks. “Maria!” 

“They are still inside!” she tells them, not sure if they hear her as she keeps running. “They wonʼt make it out in time!” 

“Whoʼs still inside?” Max asks after he effectively manages to stop her — his larger frame blocking her way, his stronger hands keeping her in place. “Isobel?” 

“Iʼm right behind you!” Isobel then says, emerging from the flames with Kyle in tow. “Whereʼs Michael?” 

Maria squirms under Max’s grip, but she can’t move. “Let me go! I can save them!” 

“How?” Max questions, his fingers digging deeper into her skin. “If they havenʼt made it out yet—” 

“Let me go!” she shrieks, and somehow there’s a force pushing Max back, forcing him to stumble and take a few steps away from her. Maria takes her chance to run past him and she rushes back toward the building. 

“Maria, wait!” Isobel calls after her. “Wait!”

“Iz, come back here! You’ll get caught in the explosion!”

“I don’t care! Michael’s in there! Maria can feel him, I’m sure of it!”

The problem, Maria realizes, is that she can’t feel anything past her own anguish eating at her insides. Where she used to feel Michael’s warmth — the splashing of wet drops she’s always associated with his iridescent aura that always sings of a hope he never seemed to actually allow himself to feel — there’s nothing left. Only a void. She stops dead on her tracks.

Isobel almost collides against her when she’s gathering her powers — the sensory overload that comes with trying to reach out — to attempt to feel Alex. Maria closes her eyes and focus, every fiber of her being trying to _feel_ someone else. She’s grasping at straws here, looking for any trace of Alex that she’s left in her memories, small and seemingly unimportant, so she can work with it to find Alex in the chaos that’s her psyche right now.

She comes back empty-handed, a trickle of blood making its way down her face.

“Maria?” Isobel asks hopefully, as the debris from the explosion keep surrounding them in what could have been a gorgeous fountain of red and grey had it not been for the fact that Maria’s been looking for two auras that simply don’t seem to exist anymore. “You’re bleeding.”

In all the time she’s dated Michael — and the weeks since she broke up with him — she’s always had his fainting presence in the back of her mind, like a comfortable, warm blanket covering one corner of her conscience. Not even after she called it quits had she felt as alone and cold as she’s feeling know.

Not even after knowing that, as much as he claimed to love her — and she’s never doubted his ability to love beyond himself — Michael Guerin would go to great lengths to save only one human. And that human wasn’t Maria DeLuca.

That human was Alex Manes, and she’s kept herself blind to that fact, terrified that if she simply _thought_ about how wrong it felt to try something with someone who clearly had his heart elsewhere, then it wouldn’t be real. Then she wouldn’t feel like a traitor. Then she wouldn’t have to admit that, in pursuing her happiness, she’s done what she always swore she’d never do.

And now she’s lost both of them to the flames and the blaze.

“I can’t feel them,” she whispers, slowly falling to her knees, her hands touching the ground as she stares up at the building coming down in shambles. “They’re—Isobel, they’re _gone_.”

“They can’t be,” Isobel stammers, kneeling beside her. “I can try to feel Michael, through this—this weird connection between us. He’s still _here_. He’s just muted, somehow.”

Maria wipes the blood from her face, and she knows she hasn’t succeeded in it at all — she can still feel the sticky liquid marring her cheek as she moves her head toward the sky. Then she sees them, clear in the blazing surroundings of a crumbling building. 

Michael has one hand stretched out for balance while the other sneaks around Alex’s waist in a motion that can’t be misinterpreted — he’s keeping Alex close while Michael maneuvers them in the air, avoiding being sent on a spiral against the hard ground. Her heart aches at the sight. They are _alive_ , and she couldn’t be more grateful as she hears Isobel exhaling by her side.

And then something happens — one second they’re swaying with the wind hitting the building and the next they’re plummeting to the ground surrounded by debris. Maria still can’t feel them, but she’s been trusting Isobel’s instincts when it comes to her brother, and after seeing them both she’d begun to hope they could be saved somehow. As she watches them speeding to the ground — as she watches Michael and Alex entangled together in a tight embrace before disappearing inside a huge ball of fire — Isobel gasps at her right and she falls to her knees, imitating Maria’s stance from before, before whispering, “I can’t feel him anymore, Maria. Everything’s cold.”

She can’t tear her gaze from the heap of fire they have become; Isobel is staring helplessly at them, her body trembling as she repeats the same words over ad over, _everything’s cold_ like a mantra, when Maria hears a sound that both freezes her to her spot and sets her into motion.

It’s a wail, loud and broken, and it’s coming from the rubble Michael and Alex have landed on.


End file.
